Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Implementing a DEPP interface on a Basys2, part 2

Previously, I described how to interface with a DEPP peripheral using the Adept SDK, and how to construct such a peripheral that will also interface with an adder. Here, I describe how to construct such an adder using Xilinx IP, and then how to connect everything together.

My first component is a DEPP peripheral, which is described in an earlier post.

Next, I want an 8-bit unsigned adder. Because I do not need to optimize for space on the FPGA, I'm going to instantiate a combinational adder. I do this by clicking the New Source button in ISE, then selecting IP (CORE Generator & Architecture Wizard). I give it a file name, in this case Adder8Bit, and click Next. I expanded the Math Functions folder, then Adders & Subtracters, and finally selected Adder Subtracter. I clicked Next again, then Finish.

The next screen allows you to configure the adder. I configured mine as shown here:

As previously described, I want an 8-bit unsigned adder, so I select unsigned for both input types, and 8 for the width of each input. I selected Add mode, with an output width of 8 (I'm ignoring the carry-out in this case). In order to create a combinational adder that doesn't depend on a clock signal, I selected Manual latency configuration with a latency of 0. As I selected options, the symbol on the left changed. When I was complete, I had only the two inputs and one output. When I had all of my options properly set, I clicked Generate, and let ISE crank away for a little while.

The core generator only creates a definition of something, not an instance. To actually make my components useful, I needed to create a single instance of my DEPP peripheral and a single instance of the adder. To do this, I created a new VHDL source file, then right-clicked on it and clicked "Set as Top Module." This tells ISE to that this is the module that interacts with the outside world (in this case, the pins on the FPGA package.

This project only utilizes the EPP pins on the FPGA, so the black-box entity description is fairly simple.

The component declarations here just tell the compiler the inputs and outputs of the components I want to instantiate, not how they work. I still haven't instantiated any components, just the signals! To instantiate the components, I need to define the architecture.

My top level entity instantiates two components, an EppModule named EppModule1 and an Adder8Bit named Adder8Bit1, and connect them using 3 intermediate signals, Op1, Op2, and Result. To test out my architecture, I ran the program described in my earlier post.While adding two unsigned 8-bit values together is very mundane, this architecture can be expanded. For example, an audio file could be downloaded to the FPGA for post-processing, or a key could be stored, and then the FPGA could be used to perform cryptographic operations.

Previously, I described how to interface with a DEPP peripheral using the Adept SDK, and how to construct such a peripheral that will also interface with an adder. Here, I describe how to construct such an adder using Xilinx IP, and then how to connect everything together.

My first component is a DEPP peripheral, which is described in an earlier post.

Next, I want an 8-bit unsigned adder. Because I do not need to optimize for space on the FPGA, I'm going to instantiate a combinational adder. I do this by clicking the New Source button in ISE, then selecting IP (CORE Generator & Architecture Wizard). I give it a file name, in this case Adder8Bit, and click Next. I expanded the Math Functions folder, then Adders & Subtracters, and finally selected Adder Subtracter. I clicked Next again, then Finish.

The next screen allows you to configure the adder. I configured mine as shown here:

As previously described, I want an 8-bit unsigned adder, so I select unsigned for both input types, and 8 for the width of each input. I selected Add mode, with an output width of 8 (I'm ignoring the carry-out in this case). In order to create a combinational adder that doesn't depend on a clock signal, I selected Manual latency configuration with a latency of 0. As I selected options, the symbol on the left changed. When I was complete, I had only the two inputs and one output. When I had all of my options properly set, I clicked Generate, and let ISE crank away for a little while.

The core generator only creates a definition of something, not an instance. To actually make my components useful, I needed to create a single instance of my DEPP peripheral and a single instance of the adder. To do this, I created a new VHDL source file, then right-clicked on it and clicked "Set as Top Module." This tells ISE to that this is the module that interacts with the outside world (in this case, the pins on the FPGA package.

This project only utilizes the EPP pins on the FPGA, so the black-box entity description is fairly simple.

The component declarations here just tell the compiler the inputs and outputs of the components I want to instantiate, not how they work. I still haven't instantiated any components, just the signals! To instantiate the components, I need to define the architecture.

My top level entity instantiates two components, an EppModule named EppModule1 and an Adder8Bit named Adder8Bit1, and connect them using 3 intermediate signals, Op1, Op2, and Result. To test out my architecture, I ran the program described in my earlier post.While adding two unsigned 8-bit values together is very mundane, this architecture can be expanded. For example, an audio file could be downloaded to the FPGA for post-processing, or a key could be stored, and then the FPGA could be used to perform cryptographic operations.